A lot of this becomes clearer when you remember that “The Fiction” is a convenient metaphor, not a real thing (remember ‘shared imagined space’?)

There’s no single, canonical, external ‘thing’ called “The Fiction” that you can point to. There’s just ideas and memories and half-formed ideas in a bunch of people’s brains. All of the things that all of the people at the table (and anyone who didn’t turn up this week but might show up next week) think about the game might be relevant to play at some point. We simplify and call all the things these people think and remember “The Fiction”, but it’s really a big mess!

This makes GcL go "Yeah, but this stuff is for cleaning up the mess, right?"I mean, never 100% clean - besides impossible, that'd be boring - but this is all messier in my my mind than I'd like it to be.